The Academy started in the fall of 1852 in a building on the location now occupied by the school parking lot. There is an early list of students who were enrolled.[1][2] It was chartered by the legislature in 1854.[3]
A listing of graduates from 1926, lists the first class as 1886.[4][5]
The cornerstone of the current building is marked "1907."[6] The project was the biggest building project the town had ever seen. It cost $42,000.[citation needed] An Indian burial ground was discovered during the excavation. There is no record of what happened to those artifacts.[citation needed] The former school was moved across the street in 1909 and later used as a gymnasium and cafeteria. It was torn down in 1980.[7]
In the early 1900s, Barton Academy ranked eighth among all high schools, public and private, in Vermont.[8]
The Academy closed in 1967, replaced by the Lake Region Union High School. The former building, with the name "Barton Academy and Graded School" carved on a 4.5 short tons (4.1t) granite slab over the entryway,[7] is used as an elementary school.
Architectural historians Glenn Andres and Curtis Johnson commented that the school had a "finely proportioned central pavilion with quoins and a broken pediment, and a Palladian porch that screens a recessed entrance" and "There is a finesse and logic to the composition that makes this village school more than a pastiche of derivative details, perhaps indicative of industrial Barton's commercial ties to major centers of taste."[9]
Principals
Benjamin Hinman Steele, briefly when he was 20 in 1853 or so, a young graduate of Dartmouth and simultaneously studying for the law at the same time! Went on to become a judge on the Vermont Supreme Court and died at the age of 37[10]
The Academy fielded Basketball Teams for both boys and girls and a boys baseball team. It fielded a soccer team beginning about 1958. School colors were orange and black. The mascot was the Yellow Peril. The school's main rival was cross-town Orleans High School.
↑Mistakenly identified as "senior class." There was no such class separation then. A student was either ready to take the college entrance exam or not. Students matriculatred individually when they were ready. There were no classes beyond elementary for students who were not intending to attend college
123Young, Darlene (1998). A history of Barton Vermont. Crystal Lake Falls Historical Association.
↑Early scholars were being tutored to take the college entrance exam, the only method of entering college then. There were no expectations of a formal "graduation" from a "high school" per se. A student would "matriculate" alone and could only tell if their tutoring was effective if they were admitted to the college of their choice. There was no formal training for children not attending college until after WW I and the educational revolution started by John Dewey
↑Crystal Lake Falls Historical Association (June 6, 2007). Barton Academy turns 100 years old. the Chronicle.
123Taylor, Dan (December 2009). "Barton Academy and Graded School - A Village Icon Enters Its Second Century". Vermont's Northland Journal. 8 (9): 15–19.
↑Gresser, Joseph (April 23, 2014). "A history of Vermont through architecture (review of Buildings of Vermont by Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson)". The Chronicle. Barton, Vermont. pp.1B.
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